Ndebele painting in VR

Abstract

The Ndebele tribe of southern Africa consists of four subtribes. The Ndzundza is the only Ndebele group practising the decorative arts of painting and beadwork. The craft of producing striking, colourful and geometrical artwork has become their most distinctive feature. The Ndebele wall painting's work and richness provided the inspiration for our project. We created a virtual environment (VE) and an interaction method that facilitates the creation, painting and mapping of these paintings on different 2D and 3D surfaces. Designing tools for painting in VEs presents many challenges. We must support design without restricting the artist's creative process. Commercially available tools mainly work in a 2D environment and use specialized interaction devices. Design tools in VEs use a mixture of 2D and 3D interaction devices and metaphors and mainly target 3D modeling for a variety of application areas. In our project-a research interface for Ndebele wall painting in a VE-we focus on the specific process of wall painting and keep our interaction metaphors as close as possible to the real wall-painting process, At the same time, the project takes advantage of the many possibilities that a VE can offer in terms of production speed and mapping on to different surfaces, among others.